The Far Horizons

Moviecut—The Far Horizons

source: The Far Horizons

I can see when you want to take liberties with certain historical films but this was absolutely ridiculous. Despite beautiful cinematography, what natural resources do we see depicted in this 1955 blunder of a film. Not only are there historical inaccuracies, this film is made into some sort of love triangle that never existed. It's really about Lewis fending off suitors for Sacajawea. Donna Reid looks haggard in the role of the great Indian woman. Whoever made her up should really have been dismissed from the make-up department. William Demarest delivers his lines as if he is coming straight out of Brooklyn, New York. I haven't stopped laughing when he said Louisiana Purchase. The "ur" in that word was made to sound like "oi" instead. Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston do their best with the exceptionally bad screen writing. At least, Heston had good thoughts-his next project would be the awesome "The Ten Commandments." This film was in Vista Vision. For the life of me, I never quite understood what that film process was all about. No wonder it quickly went out of vogue. The picture should have followed.

For what it is, an almost total fabrication of the events involved in the exploration of the Louisiana territory, the film is an enjoyable, beautifully shot adventure but for the real story look elsewhere. Donna Reed is ridiculously cast as Sacajawea, Katy Jurado who was actively working in Hollywood at the time would have been far more suitable. She gives an earnest reading of the part but if this is the best the studios could find for her after her Oscar win it's little wonder that she had moved over to TV within a few years. MacMurray although first billed actually disappears for several stretches of the film and Heston, who is ideal in this sort of picture, carries the bulk of the movie.

In 2011, "Time" magazine listed this as one of the 10 historically misleading films! As a retired American history teacher, it's pretty obvious what I think about the film!! Some of the ridiculously wrong portions of the film include a romance between Clark and Sacagawea (she was pregnant and married to Charbonneau in real life) as well as having the Donna Reed play this lady!! It's hilarious hearing her, with her perfect diction and Midwestern accent, playing a native. So how do they make her look like an Indian? LOTS of paint and a wig! I think Divine would have been about as convincing (and a lot more entertaining)!! Despite this romance NEVER occurring, it is the main focus of the film! And, despite the nasty natives in the film, for the most part, the tribes the expedition encountered were very peaceful. If you can completely ignore the film's MANY inaccuracies, it is a very nice looking but dull film. The color is amazingly nice--and has that nice 1950s color scheme. It also has many lovely location shots and is HUGE in scope. And, if you ignore most of the details, the film did get the gist of the actual story! There were folks named Lewis and Clark and they did explore the western portion of the United States. As for the acting, it was generally good, but Fred MacMurray didn't seem to have a lot to do but scowl. Poor guy. And William Demarest sounded VERY peculiar--with an accent that came and went and seemed like it was part Irish, part Scottish and part....God knows! Heston and Reed were fine. Note: Although the film is VERY pretty, sometimes the images are blurry. Apparently this is caused by differences in shrinkage rates of the color strips put together to make a full-color film. In other words, the red or blue layer might shrink at differing rates in portions of the film--giving a few scenes an odd look today. Another Note: Films about this expedition neglect to mention that not too long after it was complete that Captain Lewis committed suicide! This dark event was apparently the result of his lifelong struggle with clinical depression. Pretty sad....

I thought it was appropriate to reflect on the following issue, "Is historical accuracy relevant to the quality of a film?" If it is manufactured to provide a true representation of history, maybe so. But if it as manufactured as an entertainment vehicle, maybe not. As a piece of fiction, I believe this film to be one of the finest works of western lore ever recorded. It appeals to both men and women. It promotes ethical values. And it fills the viewer with the full range of emotions that it is expected to. I won't waste your time with the details of the plot, you can find that by the ton here. All I can tell you is that I believe that anyone who is willing to invest the time will absolutely love this.

Like every movies made from the 40's to 60's, especially the Western genre movies were stupidly dominated with non-stop annoying music bombarding from the beginning to the end. All the Hollywood movie companies hired composers, orchestras, conductors....to make soundtrack scores to go with every movie. It's so annoying, so disgustingly over the top unnecessary. Regular movies were not like cartoons made by Walter Disney, the storyline of the scripts, every movement of the characters didn't need the stupid music to support, portray, empower what went on, only the cartoons needed the music to dramatize and exaggerate every movement of Micky Mouse or Donald Duck. The music in the regular movies should be subtle and only appears when needed, not like this stupid "The Far Horizons" or all the other Western movies, played on and on non-stop. I have to completely turned the volume off or down to the minimum to allow me to continue watching this movie, avoiding the disturbing, annoying music to bombard my ears. The over-the-top non-stop soundtrack (music, scores whatever) was one of the main reasons that killed the Western genre movies and almost all of the other genre early movies. This movie was a terrible production, wasted lot of budget to portray a mediocre made-up adventure of Lewis & Clark, with lousy directing and acting. And the stupid music further ruined the almost already pathetic movie. People who could bear the disturbing music should have their hearing checked.

Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston portray Lewis and Clark, famed historians who explored the Louisianna Territory as per the instructions of President Thomas Jefferson. This plays very much like a cowboys and indians type of actioneer, but without actual cowboys. We also get a fabricated (so I've read) side love story between Clark (Heston) and lovely squaw Sacajawea (Donna Reed!!), the woman who helped lead the way during the discovery. In this story, MacMurray is the more laid back and serious leader while his partner Heston is - no surprise - rather cynical and the Wild Card of the two. Seems like Chuck played these parts constantly in the first half of this decade. It's always been odd for me to go backwards in time and see Fred MacMurray in straight films, as I grew up with him primarily as the dad from TV's sitcom MY THREE SONS. Here he shares screen time with William Demarest , who was also in the TV show as well. Demarest seemed miscast to me here though, cast as an 1800's sergeant. **1/2 out of ****

I think that the best thing this movie did to me was to unveil that wonderful character, namely Sacajawea, the Shoshone squaw who helped and guided the Lewis-Clark Expedition. After seeing it I discovered on a very old Reader's Digest issue something about her, just to realize that Sacajawea didn't have any romance with William Clark, because she was already a married woman, namely a guy named Charbonneau with whom she stayed till his death. The real Sacajawea story (or biography), as well as the real Lewis& Clark expedition, are certainly much more interesting than this Hollywood make believe-"historical" movie. For instance, it was lovely to know how Sacajawea was amazed to see a whale skeleton on a West Coast beach. However when she tried to tell this to her tribe's people, they just laughed at her, convicted that she was a liar, that no "fish" could be so big. So the "romantic" approach used in the screenplay, wasted a good opportunity to show either how fascinating the real expedition history has been or the cultural shock experienced by this simple Indian young woman when her tiny inner word was broadened by the unique opportunity she had to explore the unknown, together with the duo of white explorers and their fellows. Other than this, I remember how curious I was to differentiate the optical process used by Paramount (VistaVision) from the CinemaScope, the latter implemented by 20th Century Fox and other companies. Other than a sharper resolution, quite between us, it has been deceiving. In short, expeditions like the one the film stages, have a certain similarity with many similar expeditions carried out in Brazil, especially in the XVII century.The difference is that Lewis & Clark has been an official enterprise and the ones in Brazil have been a matter of private nature, mostly by adventurers, gold rushers, or cruel people seeking Indians for slavery, a thing that didn't work.Indians were either fragile as to Whites' diseases or too much independent to become slaves. So our Portuguese colonizers turned themselves to Africa.Too bad for it.But very good as to the splendid cultural heritage brought either by Africans or the mix of the three cultures:Indians,African and Portuguese Whites. Other than this I remember Donna Reed's performance, while I hardly remember Charlton Heston in his deep blue uniform. An I had forgotten Fred Mc Murray was on the film. In short, some thrill, some sightings in true Technicolor, but as to History, Hollywood just tried it...

'The Far Horizons' is a film in which an expeditionary force, commanded by Captain Meriwether Lewis (Fred MacMurray) and Lt William Clark (Charlton Heston), sets out to explore newly acquired US territory. The film begins with an atmospheric party at which the news of the American expansion is broken, and arrangements are made to investigate. Subsequent scenes are ominous and foretelling, and handle this effect quite well. Sadly, it tends to go downhill from there. Although MacMurray, Heston and Donna Reed (who plays a helpful young Native woman and romantic interest of Lt Clark) play their parts well, the uncertainty of the surveyors' mission renders the film's direction ambiguous at times. The cinematography is in parts very good, and the tedious, repetitive shots that I usually associate with maritime films are satisfyingly rare in 'The Far Horizons'. However, some of the choreography isn't very good, and one or two fight scenes appear pretty poorly designed. Also, many of the Natives are depicted as being quite flat in character and lacking in opinion, and so not many of the supporting cast and extras perform dynamically. The final scenes of the film attempt to be reflective, with a letter being read in a narrative form, but the mediocre and vague drama in the prior scenes lead to this delivery feeling unsubstantiated.